Radeon VII Announced: First 7nm GPU, Releases on February 7th at $699 USD

AMD at CES 2019 just unveiled their new Radeon VII graphics card, competing with NVIDIA’s high-end RTX 20 Series GPUs. The GPU is built on AMD’s second-gen Vega architecture, and is the first GPU with a 7nm manufacturing process. It has about 30% higher gaming performance compared to its predecessor, the Vega 64.

The Radeon VII will be releasing on February 7, 2019 with a price-tag of $699

Pricing in India should be upwards of 50,000 INR and will probably be released by early March. This $699 price-tag is midway between the RTX 2070 & RTX 2080 GPUs, which are priced at $499 and $799 respectively.

There’s also a ‘Raise the Game Fully Loaded’ game-bundle. Three free games – Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry 5 and Tom Clancy’s The Divison 2 will be included with the purchase of an eligible Radeon VII GPU or eligible gaming desktops powered by it.

Tech Specs

• Manufacturing Process: 7nm
• Memory (VRAM): 16GB HBM2
• Memory Bandwidth: 1TB/s
• Memory Bus: 4096-bit
• Stream Processors: 3840
• Compute Units: 60
• Raster Operators: 128
• Texture Mapping Units: 240
• Maximum Clock Speed: 1800MHz
• FP32 Compute Speed: 13.8 TFLOPs
• TDP: ~300W
• Power Connectors: Dual 8-pin

Performance Benchmarks by AMD

Initial performance benchmarks were presented by AMD on the stage, in which comparing the Radeon VII to NVIDIA’s RTX 2080 and also the Vega 64. As mentioned before, the Vega VII is around 30% faster compared to the RX Vega 64.

Compared to the RTX 2080, the Radeon VII actually performed better in the tested games at 4K Max Settings. The games were Battlefield V (DX12), Far Cry 5 (DX11) and Strange Brigade (Vulkan).

While there was only a 1FPS difference in Far Cry 5 & Battlefield V, the Radeon VII got 14 FPS more in Strange Brigade which was a Vulkan title. AMD GPUs really do shine when used with the Vulkan API.

The Radeon VII seems to be a phenomenal GPU. With the included game bundle, the price is very appealing. But still, I recommend waiting for performance benchmarks done by reviewers before deciding to buy it.

“AMD Radeon VII is the highest-performance gaming graphics card we ever created. It is designed for gamers, creators and enthusiasts who demand ultra-high quality visuals, uncompromising performance and immersive gaming experiences.”

Scott Herkleman, Corporate Vice President and General Manager at Radeon Technologies Group